Dems Have "Issues," All Right

Commentary by Greg Lewis / NewMediaJournal.US
March 17, 2007

Q. What's the favorite snack food of liberals?

A. Knee-jerky.

So predictable are Democrats' responses with regard to fundamental issues such as war and taxes and the judiciary that you generally know in advance pretty much what they're going to do and say when things reach a fever pitch.

But I have to admit I wasn't prepared when, a short time ago, Nancy ("Mr. Peabody") Pelosi and her pet boy Murtha seemed to invoke the Wayback Machine (you remember Rocky and Bullwinkle, right?) and actually floated the notion that Dems might go back in time and change their votes on whether or not the President should be given the power to invade Iraq. (Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters actually called Pelosi's pet boy "a lunatic" in a Fox New TV interview, putting into words the feelings of so many people who are not buying the Democrats' blather and thus still qualify to be described as in their right minds.)
This particular Dem stratagem was, by some counts, one of as many as 17 different forays into the increasingly politically dangerous territory of attempting to usurp the Presidential power to wage war.

Early on, there was the infamous non-binding resolution on the War, the idea for which Dems seem to have stolen from Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K Stern's "commitment ceremony," in which the pair did not get married although they pretended to, just as the Democrats did not take a stand on the War in Iraq, although they pretended to.

Now the New York Times — what a mockery this publication makes of the "news" business — trumpets the headline "Congress Gears Up for Debate on Getting U.S. Out of Iraq," this in the same issue as an editorial with this lead: "Because we ask the ultimate sacrifice of the animals we eat, it is incumbent on us to ensure that they have decent lives."

Talk about tripe! Democrats have botched the issue of the War in Iraq so badly that they truly threaten to undermine their victory in last November's elections. It's clear that, despite their incessant caterwauling on the subject, Democrats have no intention of even so much as stating their position on the War in Iraq, let alone doing something legislatively meaningful about it. It's classic Dem head-in-the-sand posturing, with nothing of substance to back it up.

But add to their fumbling about on the War in Iraq the fact that you can't turn on the TV without seeing Chuck Schumer whining about how the Gonzales Justice Department's sacking of 8 Federal attorneys is infinitely worse than Janet Reno's sacking of all 93 at the outset of the Clinton Presidency (well, Schumer conveniently fails to mention Reno's exploits), and you've got a good sense of what the Democrat majority has brought to governance.

There are at least two current instances, involving U.S. Attorneys David Iglesias of New Mexico and John McKay from Washington state, in which allegations of voter fraud in extremely close elections were not followed up on adequately by the U.S. Attorney's offices, in Iglesias' case not at all. These alone would constitute grounds for dismissal, that is, if we were dealing with rational beings in the Democrats.

Add to this the fact that in 1993 the Clintons were dancing as fast as they could to avoid prosecution for their illegal Whitewater dealings, and that the firing of all of the U.S. Attorneys (unprecedented, by the way, in our political history, despite the Clintons' protestations to the contrary) got rid of at least one Arkansas U.S. Attorney who might well have sought indictments against the President and his wife (no indictments for Whitewater were ever brought, by the way), and you get a picture of the Democrats as disingenuous misrepresenters of the basest sort.

Among those misrepresenters is Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, currently Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's now virtually forgotten that Senator Leahy committed arguably treasonous acts during the Reagan Administration. In fact, Leahy resigned from his post on the Senate Intelligence Committee, his resignation coming after a six-month investigation into allegations that he was responsible for leaking classified information in 1986 about a covert U.S. operation to overthrow the government of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafi.
Leahy's stated reason for leaking the information was that he (Leahy) thought the proposed operation was "the most ridiculous thing I had seen." (The operation was forced to be called off as a result of the publicity generated by his revelations.)
In addition to his leaking of information about the proposed Khadafi ouster, the basis for charges against Leahy included the fact that he had been caught in the act of allowing a network news reporter access to the Senate Intelligence Committee's confidential documents in 1986.

The fact that Leahy is still a Senator, let alone that he is allowed to sit in judgment of Alberto Gonzales, is arguably a testament to Vermonters blindness to criminal behavior, but it is nonetheless a blot on the American political scene and will, hopefully, be one more black mark against Democrats as they continue their scorched earth policy against Republicans.

I think that the American people, as they watch Pelosi and Schumer and Murtha and Leahy trot out their specious charges and justifications for mass Republican resignations and America's defeat in Iraq, are beginning to see the Dems for what they really are: pretenders to political power who have no positive program of their own but who live only to trash their perceived enemy, with no thought for the good of our nation.